The O-Zone

Normally when the weather forecast calls for ‘x’ amount of snow, we get less than predicted. And we were actually hoping that pattern would hold true for the current weather forecast. Alas. And not a lack of snow!

The prediction was for a foot of snow this week.  Since our driveway is barely navigable as it is, we were hoping all the snow would go south of us.  No such luck.

Dan when it was barely light outside, walking on the crusty ice, in the new snow, using a broom to steady himself.  Look how far down the broom goes before it hits the ground!  He’s standing on two feet of snow and the snow from last night is what he’s wading through.

We had no internet this morning, and needed to brush the heavy wet snow off the dish.  Mish was standing next to me in the sunroom, looking out the windows and watching Dan wade through the snow.  Mish thought it looked wrong and he was growling at Dan, which made the parrots upset because the cat was upset.  Much excitement was had by all.

Nine inches of snow on the sidewalk which needs to be shoveled.

The heavy wet snow mostly slid off the greenhouse roof, and the snow on the sides of the building now reaches the roof.  You can just barely see the pallets of wood pellets next to the garage.  There is so much snow in and around, and on top of them.

And it is still snowing.

We are supposed to get another few inches today.

Dan says this is all my fault because I’ve always wanted to get snowed in.

I think I’ve achieved that ambition.  This is definitely the most snow we’ve been in since we lived up the North Fork in Montana, and got four feet of snow in 2 days.

News flash. It’s snowing again.

This could give us another 8 or 9 inches of snow, at this rate.

Ye gads.

Since last Saturday we’ve had a foot of new snow fall, and temperatures in way below zero range. The lowest we saw was -16F and then it warmed up to -14F. That gave us hope.

The week before we could actually see some bare sidewalk peaking out, and the snow was starting to settle and look soft.

But then our friend called us to say, “Guess what I saw?!”

A bluebird!!  Well, bluebirds are one of the earliest spring migrants, so even though we still had well over a foot of snow in our yard, we totally bought that they saw a bluebird.  And we got all excited to think spring was really on the way!

It wasn’t true.

Mother nature was not amused by jokes about bluebirds.  This is all Jack’s fault.

Spectacular sunset last night.

The whole sky was a pale gold, and in one corner where the sun was setting, it was a much deeper and more intense color.

The snow WAS melting, but then the temperatures went into the single digits overnight, and that put a screeching halt to any melting that was going on.  Nature was just letting us know that winter isn’t over, yet, and don’t let us forget who is in charge around here.

It just makes for somewhat boring pictures.

It has been a very snowy winter this year, but never a huge amount at any one time, just four inches here, five inches there, enough to lull us into a false sense of not needing to plow the driveway.  Again.

Got another four inches of snow again last night, after a few days of slightly above freezing and some melting and settling of the snow on the ground.  Definitely above two feet on the ground again.

Looking out the front door to the deer trail coming down the hill.  The snow has completely covered their trail.

The does are getting snarky with their fawns, grumbling about sharing the seeds that fall on the ground out of our feeders, courtesy of the picky chickadees who grab a seed and say, “Not that one,” “Not that one,” “Oh, this one is good.  Oops dropped it,” “Not that one,” “Not that one.”  Etc.  With a herd of at fifty chickadees, they go through a lot of seeds this way.

Looking at the trees behind the house, all covered with snow again. Lots of snow on the roof, and a snowy path which needs shoveling.

The heavy snows which had weighed down the plum tree, broke one of the major branches and it is now hanging loose on the left side of the tree, hanging by a strip of bark.  Dan trimmed part of it off that was blocking the sidewalk.

Looking southwest down the hill, more snowy trees and we’re in our usual fog bank.

Look how much snow is piled against the sides of the greenhouse. When the new batch falls off later today, it may reach the roofline.

Wednesday morning started off spectacularly with the lunar eclipse.  We got up in plenty of time to see it, a blood red full moon high in the sky, surrounded by stars.  And while Dan was watching it, a meteor went by the moon, just to add that something extra.  I wish our camera was good enough to capture just how beautiful it was, but it was too dark.  It wasn’t that cold, only about 20 degrees, and the snow was all sparkles around our feet.

The sky stayed clear throughout the entire eclipse.  Just so beautiful!!

I did manage to get a picture of the full moon as it was close to setting, only partially obscured by clouds which were low on the western horizon.

Not much in the way of sunny skies around here, which means the solar panels don’t have a lot of work today.  Right now they are completely covered with snow, in any event, so the fact it’s completely foggy/cloudy is somewhat irrelevant.

This is a pretty stout plum tree.

Last fall the plum tree held up several hundred pounds of rowdy black bear, and now it’s holding at least that much weight in accumulated snow flakes.

Conifer trees down the hill from our house are once again holding a lot of snow. Just last week it got warm enough to melt almost all the snow off the trees. It sure changes fast!

The snow storm on Thursday and Friday gave us an additional four inches of snow.  We have roughly two feet of snow on the ground at the moment.  Once it settles a bit, it won’t look like so much.  The warm weather last week during the day, and below freezing temperatures overnight, gave the snow a good firm crust and the red squirrels were enjoying it immensely as they could run as fast as they wanted, pretty much anywhere they wanted.  The deer weren’t having as much fun.  Their feet would hold up on top of the snow until they put all their weight on the foot, and then they would break through into deep snow.  The youngsters, in particular, were having a rough time getting around.  This new snowfall is going to make it even harder to move around quickly.

Ice from the eaves by the front door. The roof on the house and garage is holding a lot of snow.

Love the new roof!!  Snow stays put and doesn’t come crashing down scaring everybody in the house and making a mess on the sidewalks.

The snow piled up on the stove pipe on the garage looks funny. A top hat!  You can see it at the back of the garage, right hand side of the garage above the farthest right window.

We’ve only gone through two full pallets, plus a couple rows of bags on the third pallet of our wood pellets so far this winter.  This stove seems to be a lot more efficient than the wood stove, and much easier to deal with, except for the electric use aspect.  We definitely won’t need to buy more pellets for next winter – yay!

A lot of snow piled up on the edges of the sidewalk, and another inch of snow fell after Dan shoveled it yesterday.

The picture is kind of dark because there’s no sunshine.  Perhaps this afternoon, in which case we’ll have to go remove the snow from the solar panels.  Dan asked me who is this “we” I’m talking about. 🙂

Snowing today, and clear skies are promised for this afternoon.  That will be nice.  We’ll need to clear the solar panels and give them a chance to do some work.  Also the satellite dishes need to be brushed off.

Standing on the porch by the sunroom and looking down the hill.

I was trying to catch the snowflakes on the camera but they were a bit too small and falling too fast and thick.  That’s why it looks like it’s foggy – it’s just lots and lots of snowflakes.

We might go snowshoeing today, and walk in the woods.

Walking under conifer trees heavily laden with snow can be invigorating when the snow cascades down on top of your head.

And of course I never do anything to cause that to happen, like grabbing a branch when Dan is underneath it, and give it a little shake.

Looks like we’re going to have clear skies, like they are predicting, I’ll take the camera with us for more pictures later today.

Happy New Year!

Well, I guess that depends on what level of technology it is you’re talking about, so need to qualify this subject.

New technology is great, except when you rely on it. Fortunately we have contingency plans since you can really only count on new technology to fail when it most inconvenient.

First example. Our gas range using new technology and electronics has had the glow bar/ignitor in the oven portion fail intermittently over the last couple of months. This is exceedingly dangerous when it decides to fail in the middle of baking something, as a small amount of propane gas leaks into the oven, where it accumulates.   And depending on how long that situation continued, an explosion is unlikely but not impossible.  It’s just dangerous and stupid to keep fooling with it.    We called a repair man.

So while we wait for a new part to be procured and installed (two weeks and counting), our old technology wood cookstove is doing the baking for us. It’s way more fiddly, needing to check on the temperature in the oven frequently and adjust the amount of wood in the fire box.

An old-fashioned recipe – baked rice pudding. Delicious. This isn’t going to last long around here.

We would use the cookstove a lot more this winter had we had a good supply of firewood. Unfortunately the man who had been delivering firewood to us turned out to be fundamentally dishonest, or just an idiot. And seriously, it is really hard to tell the difference with that guy.

So we made the decision to focus on wood pellets and not try to find a new source of firewood this year.   All of which means we’ve been saving the small amount of firewood we did purchase in the fall for really cold weather, intending to use the cookstove to supplement our other sources of heat.   And this winter we are relying on our new technology wood pellet stove in the living room for our main heat source, but because we’re not idiots we also have two propane wall furnaces as a back up heat source. And we had the propane company bring us another large tank of propane to enable us to use them if we needed to.

Second example. The wood pellet stove we bought late last winter when we ran out of firewood, as a direct correlation to dealing with the ‘idiot,’ had an ignitor fail within the first month we had the stove installed.  No ignitor, no heat.

Ok…hmmmmmm, manufacturing mistakes can happen.

A new ignitor was installed promptly and everything has been going along swimmingly since then. Until the middle of last night when the ignitor failed again. Hmmmmmm. Sunday… how convenient.

So, propane heat to the rescue with the old technology cookstove providing some additional heat, and baking sweet potatoes at the same time. Maybe I’ll make some pizza too 🙂 or muffins for the parrots. They’d like that, little piggies that they are.

We’ll call the company who sold us the wood pellet stove tomorrow morning and hope they can bring us a new part post haste.  Propane wall heaters to the rescue until that happens.

On the plus side, the kitchen is nice and cozy and my laptop is portable 🙂

I finished a knitting project I started a couple of days ago. I bought beads last August when we were in Spokane doing something, planning on making a new knitted purchase. I hadn’t tried this particular color combination before and like it a lot.

Dan likes this one a lot, and wants me to keep it.  The fringe beads are a mixture of amethyst and crystals and sterling silver spacers.

So now I’m back to working on a vest I started a long time ago using yarn my friend Diana made. I am not using a pattern so I have to do some counting stitches and rows before I continue with the second side of the front. Having the two front pieces match is preferable. I love the colors of this yarn – they remind me of Terry’s feather colors.

This is one of many partially completed knitting projects I have on needles. I’ve decided to finish them before I start anything new.

We’ll see how long that resolution lasts.  Probably just until I see something shiny.

A Bald Eagle just flew by the house; the parrots told us about it.

Need to get this out of the house so I stop playing with it. I decided Santa needed a doll, so I made a princess doll from Frozen. Then I decided he needed a sack.

He is cute. I have to admit that.

Next he’ll need a sled and twelve tiny reindeer.

I need help!

Finally finished. Yay!

This one is my own design, using what I learned from all the other patterns.

I had an idea in my  head for this ornament, and it kind of worked out the way I thought it would.

First row of bells in place, and the way I came up with to keep them in place worked! Will wonders never cease.

All the bells in place and just the edges to complete. I decided to do something very simple for the edges.

Attached the bells to the maple dowel, and this little project is done.